To Support the Vision of
Mulund Institute
First Three Stages of Life
In our earliest time of life, our awareness expands in very specific stages of development—and new capabilities for participating in life and with the Divine Reality emerge. It is a creative challenge to help children adapt to those new abilities fully and responsibly—and to demonstrate right adaptation as adults too. At every age, to be truly happy, we must be responsibly and intelligently alive in relationship with Reality in all the dimensions of life—humanly, spiritually, and altogether.
Avatar Adi Da has described the stages of human growth and spiritual realization in a schema He calls “the seven stages of life”. Adi Da details exactly what each stage involves—from the time we are born, through human maturity, and also in all possible dimensions of spiritual realization beyond that maturity.
The Vision of Mulund Institute programs focus on Avatar Adi Da’s teachings for what He calls “the first three stages of life”. Since every one of us goes through the first three stages of life, Adi Da’s detailed instruction about them is an invaluable tool—for children of all ages, for the adults who serve children, and for adults who want to keep maturing themselves.
The model of the first three stages of life also provides us with a guide to what true human maturity looks like—which turns out to be a tall order. Most adults are still working on physical, emotional--sexual, and mental--intentional growth challenges they didn't complete during their younger years. Pinpointing the gaps in our development, and providing the means for going beyond this stalled growth is also a tremendous aspirational help to adults of all ages.
The next three stages in Avatar Adi Da’s schema, four through six, provide insight into various kinds of spiritual awakening we humans can experience once human maturity has been reached. While these higher stages are potential in all of us, full awakening to any of them is extremely rare. Adi Da’s model of the stages is a unique tool for appreciating the extraordinary beings who do awaken spiritually, the degree of their realization, and the traditions they commonly leave behind them—all within the context of a whole. Avatar Adi Da refers to this collective as the “Great Tradition”, and His map of the stages allows us to understand the totality of our human and spiritual inheritance.
The seventh is the completing, or ultimate, stage of our potential as human and spiritual beings. Not only is Avatar Adi Da the first to realize this consummating stage of life, but He has also established His unique seventh stage revelation as the foundation on which we can approach all the earlier stages. By offering the gift of His seventh stage wisdom and blessing to us, Adi Da transforms what is otherwise an arduous struggle with the egoic limits and growth challenges of the first six stages into a nonproblematic, ego--transcending process filled with His help—at every stage.
To learn more about Avatar Adi Da's model of the seven stages of life, see The Seven Stages of Life